 I'm very nervous. And so when I'm nervous, I like to do the thing that's the scariest thing Alright, which is to sing in front of people because since I'm already nervous. What the hell, right? So I'm gonna sing this little song. It's it's an autobiographical song I didn't write the tune the tune is to coal miner's daughter and by the end of it. It's just a verse You'll know About me in my background. Okay, and then I'll be less nervous. Okay. I Was born a me Cutter's daughter My mom is from the Philippines. She was a janitor. I ate TV dinners at night I grew up by the TV light while dad drank vodka in the basement and mom hollered So that's my little song and I look yeah, I know But I I love telling that saying that part that my mom's from the Philippines because I know people look at me and She doesn't look Filipino and but I am indeed my grandma I will and one of my topic today is the question that you've all been asking which is why Americans are so crazy Right, don't you really want to know and I'll tell I actually know the answer. I'm so I'm gonna be talking about that And also why I'm not crazy And I feel like the reason I'm not crazy is it has a lot to do with my grandmother And when I say my grandma's from the Philippines This is what the the language I grew up with in my house sounds like Matigasang ulo ni linda nakopo. That means hard as the head of Linda. Oh my and And my grandma grew up very poor in a rural village in the Philippines And when she came to the states and she grew up without electricity when she came to the states There was something I noticed right away about her as I was growing up and that she was different from other Grammets that I'd seen one. She was really flexible. She could sit on the floor She could do all this stuff. The other is she had really odd ways of telling us how to How to behave, you know, there's grandma's who'd say now you clean your room You just get in there and clean your room. This is how my grandma would tell it. She'd go, you know, Linda There is a vampire named the a swan from the Philippines It's a lady vampire at night. She takes her legs off She flies over to our house. She climbs the wall goes over your bed Put her tongue down to suck your blood because you don't pick up your clothes And she having a grandma like that who had a whole way of Explaining things that came from a long long tradition from her village was really different than a lot of grandma's who because you know The United States is like 250 years old and kind of acts like a two and a half year old a lot of times So she helped me the other thing that helped me was I was devoted to hula dancing and I I had the kind of family that really didn't care what I did and no one told me There's no job waiting for you as a hula dancer so I did a lot of dancing and then the other thing that I did was I was able to go to school and I was able to go to college and it was in at college that I met my teacher Marilyn Frasca who asked me a question that Changed my life and it was I was 19 and she said what is an image? she asked what is an image and Her idea was that an image is the thing that's contained in anything that we call the arts or in what kids Call play or toys, but I can tell you what an image is by telling you what it feels like if you can remember the very first Person that you had a crush on can you remember because I want you to say their initials. I'm going to come to three I want you to say their initials ready one two three RS Now the third person you had a crush on Do you feel the difference? Well, you can almost I'm gonna remember Can you feel the difference in your head that first one was spontaneous? So the first thing about an image is it's spontaneous the other thing is it feels somehow alive? and the way that I can explain that is sort of With kids you always see a kid who has maybe you were the kind of kid that had a little toy That was like your favorite little toy or maybe you know kids who have a little toy that That they know if you go up to him and you say well Is your bunny alive and the kids maybe eight or nine the bunny knows that he's the kid knows that that The bunny's not alive in the way we're alive and so no bunnies not alive and you say well as bunny dead It's like never talk about bunny that way bunny's not alive But he's not dead bunny something in between and what's interesting about that is I always think a bunny is the first artwork That's the thing that contains an image and kids do it naturally And I had some friends who had a little girl who got really attached to I think the ugliest toy ever made it was this Banana with blue eyes and little dangling arms, you know, it was called mr. Banana and She carried mr. Banana with her all the time and her parents were so embarrassed about it and they went on a trip to London and They were trying to get her off of mr. Banana, but she wouldn't let go of mr. Banana And so they just they convinced her to go for a walk with them and leave mr. Banana behind in the hotel And she wouldn't so into that but they did it But while they were gone they came back and while they were gone the maids had cleaned the room and mr. Banana was gone Which I love saying because I like to see faces go not mr. Banana You even don't don't know mr. Banana, but you don't have talking about and so she goes crazy She's losing her mind. My friend calls down. Luckily the concierge understands mr. Banana They're in England all get right on it And so then they they do this search and he and she's crying and losing her mind My friend said the best phone call he ever got in his life was the phone rings and it and it's mr. Banana has been fanned And so run up knock knock knock they carry mr. Banana and this girl is relieved What what's interesting about that? This is just a piece of cloth with just some stuffing in it And it is the difference of whether that girl is going to be able to sleep at night or not It's it's a I always think of it as one of the original wireless devices, you know That it contains an image that she put in there when you look at kids playing they don't go Barbie Ken we're about to play. It's gonna be a three act You first you're gonna meet then there'll be conflict resolution and then the day new mall let's play no Oftentimes a kid starts playing and they don't even know they're playing and one of the things that's freaking me out about the digital The thing about technology is that for the first time in human history The normal amount of eye contact that happened between a child and their parent is now reduced because I look around Moms are always on their iPhones or their blackberries while kids are doing other things So the iPhone takes away from the actual like eyes and so I'm watching this mom She's having breakfast her kids sitting here. He's about eight and she's having breakfast and she's And he's picking up this piece eating his breakfast and he picks up this piece of bacon and all of a sudden he goes I'm gonna eat you And then he does the bacon going Yes, I'm going to eat you and I'm watching like house is gonna come out You know like I'm really it we're all like really into it He's like doing I'm gonna eat you and all of a sudden his mom stops just long enough to go What are you doing? And he has no idea he didn't have any idea that he was playing at all And so that's another thing is that that it's spontaneous and it feels kind of alive And the way I think that we do that as adults is if you've ever had a book that you've carried around and it's been around in your Place for a really long time and you haven't read it. It's been years and finally you say one night You're just gonna read it and you start to read it and you realize it's a good book You know that feeling you get the first 20 pages. It's a good book 40 pages It's a little like falling in love 40 pages 30 60 pages like don't mess up this relationship man And then and then when you're almost done you have what do you do you have 40 pages left? Don't you slow down you slow down because this world that's so alive to you that contains an image Only has a quarter of an inch left and and when you're done you read the last page Don't you do this after you're done like look at the book You know because it's gone from being an object to something that contains in an image and another thing about an image is it's specific I don't know if you know about imaginary friends But I always wanted an imaginary friend and I didn't know how to get one So I decided to just lie because who could tell which meant meant I had an imaginary imaginary friend Which isn't as good as a real imaginary friend and I had a friend who had a real imaginary friend and this real I could tell first of all because it had a stupid name sprinkles Secondly this friend she could only talk to her through a moving fan You can't make that up right so that I knew that that was that was a real imaginary friend Well, one of the things so you think about all these things would play and all of us and one day I was hearing on the radio this because they can do functional MRIs now and And they could do it on little kids. They can do it And so that there was this a neuroscientist who was very interested in what happens in the brain when adults are in the Active creative concentration and kids are in the active play and so they did the MRIs and found that their brains looked Identical and what what was what was striking about it was that they That the whole brain was activated when you thought of your first crush I would say if we had a functional MRI your whole brain would be activated if And that third crush where you had to think it's a smaller part of the brain So then I started to think well What about what do we know about play and one thing everyone can answer from my little Filipino grandma to my Norwegian grandma they can all answer this question if you have a kid and they're never allowed to play until they're 21 What do we know about them by the time they're 21? They're crazy, right? They'd be crazy and Which is really interesting. So I thought well, what about adults? And then I thought that's why Americans are so crazy Because we've been completely talked out about it doing these things and it happens very early I remember when I'd be like like on the radio a guy would come on and saying if you'd like and I'd be 12 You'd like to be a concert violinist. You must begin by the age of three be like damn You know or if you you want to be a ballet dancer. It has to happen by the age of five Or you'd always hear writers saying stuff like I began writing novels very early when I was in the womb with my Developing fingers on the placenta. I wrote my first novel and you say well, man, I'm not a I'm definitely not an artist and So the last thing I want to say is I want to talk about a phantom limb pain And I'm going to put this down and in about a brilliant neuroscientist who you may know Vs. Ramachandran Genius and he was particularly interested in the in the phenomenon of phantom limb pain and You all know what that is right? If you're if you loop missing your hand your sensation is that it's still there and you can feel pain I believe there's phantom limb pleasure, but no one calls their doctor about it. You know my missing hand. It feels fantastic I mean nobody calls their doctor about that, but it phantom limb pain so he had a fellow he had a patient whose Phantom limb pain was his hand was missing but his sensation was that it was in a fist and the fist kept getting tighter And tighter and tighter and tighter and this guy was losing his feeling that life was worth living He lost that feeling it doesn't seem like much to just have your hand in a fist But he couldn't sleep. He couldn't concentrate. He didn't want to go on nobody knew what to do with him Ramachandran did this he built a box and I always think of it It's like a big shoe box and he put a mirror facing this way And he put a hole here and he told the guy to put his hand in so that when he looked down He saw the reflection of a fist and then he said open your hand He opened his hand. He saw the other one open and the problem was solved That's what I believe the image world does. I believe that in the course of human life We have a million things like this like my grandma who went through the war or losing a parent early on or having an alcoholic father I believe there are so many things like this and the only thing that can open it is An image and I think that the image world is the doko that carries us and That it is the corollary to our immune system It's just like our immune system except for it's for our mental health and that these original digital devices wireless biofueled are the key to things and also these and that's the thing I would like to say to you that the image world is so much more than art or Or something that can bring you something it actually is like an external organ that has absolutely tied to our mental health And we ignore it at our peril now. I'm just gonna do a quick thing. I'm gonna end with a party trick really quick I can sing without moving my lips. It's always good to end with a party trick No matter how boring this is this will take care of that And I mean it from the image part of me to the image part of you And I'm also kind of a clown